These Are My Friends On Politics by Billy O’Keefe

An amusing and needed story

4 out of 5 stars

I saw the cover of this book when I was up later than I should have been reading through comments on Twitter. Ironically, it was basically surrounded by political arguments (thankfully, this twitter account is mostly book readers, reviewers, bloggers, and authors). I saw the cover and had to read it.

I just sat down today to read this after trying hard to ignore my Facebook and personal Twitter feeds because there are so many people arguing over what is going on with President…. you know who. It has made for some of the most heated and political arguments I’ve seen and heard ever in my lifetime.

This book is perfect and might even be a reminder to some of these people on why they are friends and what they are actually arguing about.

These Are My Friends On Politics is laugh out loud funny. The illustrations are gorgeous and really make this book in my opinion. Those and the footnotes that O’Keefe adds to most of the pages.

If you are looking for an escape — even briefly from your Facebook or Twitter arguments, I mean feeds, check this book out. I think you’ll smile and laugh along as you think about different people in your life.

Book Description:

It happens, every day, often without warning. Normal grown adults — completely capable ones who do things like go to work, pay bills and help their children do homework — stumble, often accidentally, into a discussion about politics. At least, it starts as a discussion. More often than anyone cares to admit, it descends into an argument, a blowout and eventually a volleyball match of personal attacks and insults these ostensibly fully together adults didn't even know they had in them.

Vibrantly illustrated and sharply but warmly written, These Are My Friends on Politics hilariously lampoons this transformation, chronicling how an election year turns the reasonable adults we aspire to be into nothing better than vicious, bickering children.

I received this book for free. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

About the Author:

Billy O’Keefe is a Printers Row, Chicago-based writer, illustrator and web developer who enjoys all three things too much to give any one of them up as a career. These Are My Friends on Politics is his first book. He also is one of the contributors to Too Many Controllers, a 2017 short story anthology produced in conjunction with Nerdist Industries.

You can find samples of all of his work, as well as some great pictures of dogs, at his website, billyok.com.

I’ve loved reading since I was little when my dad would read me Dr. Suess books. Fast-forward a little and I noticed that he was always reading on his lunch breaks at work, and I wondered why.Then, I found a book that took me to another place and time, to another feeling,another sense of “being”.It was the first book that I ever fell in love with, and I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.